The Australasian Group.

The Australasian group consists of the eight colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and Fiji. It is difficult to convey to those who have not seen them an adequate idea of the bounties of nature towards this extraordinary region. They include in their wide area of more than three million square miles every geographical characteristic—noble rivers, magnificent mountains, fertile plains, arid deserts, with the most uniform and glorious climate in the world overhead, and below an page 9 inexhaustible store of mineral wealth. The senior of them has yet to celebrate the centenary of its foundation. But the chief towns rival the old world in the refinement, the luxury, and the culture of civic life, while the bush rears a hardy race devoted to field sports and all the manly virtues which have contributed to the preeminence of the British people.

It was but fitting that New South Wales should have been the first to declare, conjointly with Canada, that the sons of Greater Britain are not less willing than the children of the mother country to take up arms and lay down their lives for the honour and integrity of the mighty empire we share in common.

Queensland extends over a territory thirteen times the size of Great Britain, abounding in wide pastures, rich gold fields, and deep sugar plantations. The heat—especially in the northern portion, which is seeking separate local government—is tropical, but the energy of the colonists is superior to any mere atmospheric inconveniences.

But it is at Melbourne that the attention of the traveller is first riveted. Fifty years ago the seat to-day of one of the finest cities of the world was but a marsh. Now what a change! There is a new Paris. Unlike Rome, it is almost the work of a day. Melbourne was planted on a foundation of gold, and her magnitude and importance increased with the discovery of each fresh nugget.

South Australia is making rapid headway against difficulties of no mean order, and Western Australia, although still far behind, will doubtless lift up its head in the time to come.

It may be doubted if there is any place in the world where men can live upon air; but if there is one such, it is assuredly Tasmania. There it is a perpetual May Day. The summer sun is tempered by gentle breezes, and the cold grip of winter is unknown.

But the most attractive colony in Australasia is certainly New Zealand. In the lower part of the Middle or South Island, as it is now usually called, we find Scotland reproduced. There are the snowy mountains, there the lochs, there the frequent rain, there the industrious, frugal, farseeing race.

On the Canterbury Plains we have Yorkshire itself, and the country is hardly less attractive in its natural features and daily life than its great prototype.

In the North Island there are still some 40,000 Maoris who own the greater part of the land, and have equal rights with the page 10 colonists. They are a quiet, harmless race, idle perhaps, and not scrupulously honest, more especially under the advancing influence of civilisation, European clothing, and Irish whisky. But the North Island of New Zealand stood until lately preeminent in the world in the possession of its hot lakes, hidden in the most cunning formations of nature, and springs containing all the medicines of science. Men arrived on crutches, racked and distorted by disease, and went away cured. Nor was the district a mere hospital. Nature, while benefiting the bodies of the afflicted, delighted their vision with the most extraordinary and exquisite phenomena it was possible to conceive. But recently terrible eruptions took place, destroyed the marvellous terraces, and covered the country for miles with lava. Temporary devastation was the result, but in course of time the ground will become fertile, and if less interesting to the eye, more valuable to the pocket.

Fiji is the centre of a numerous group of islands taken but ten years ago under British protection, and already the happy possessors of a sound administration, a surplus revenue, and that without which no Englishman is thoroughly happy, viz. a good solid grievance.

It lies in the fact that this colony and Western Australia are still administered as Crown colonies. In each of the six others we find a representative Government, of which the Governor nominated by the Crown is head, assisted by a responsible Ministry formed from the Parliamentary majority for the time being. There are two Chambers, the lower elected by universal suffrage, an absolute necessity in so thinly peopled a country. In New South Wales, New Zealand, and Queensland, the members of the Upper House are nominated for life by the advice of the Prime Minister; but in South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria the Upper House is elected. A former Premier of the latter colony, thus writes on the subject:—"This apparently democratic provision proves in practice a source of endless trouble and conflict. The nominated council, liable to be modified like the House of Lords by new nominations, never proved long intractable to the ascertained wishes of the community. The elected council,' on the contrary, assumes that it is the equal of the assembly, deriving its authority also from the ascertained wish of the electors, and insists that, to give way too promptly in a conflict with the other Chamber, is to betray its special constituents."

Although Australasia, without the New Guinea territory, em- page 11 braces an area equal to that of all Europe without France or Spain, it contains only 3,000,000 inhabitants. The population is increasing at the rate of 110,000 a year; but when we consider that Europe supports 327,000,000, or 87 persons to the square mile, we arrive at the astounding result that there is room, though not present opening, for some 250,000,000 additional British subjects in the Greater Britain of the South Seas. The population is now increasing at the rate of 42 per cent, in each decennial period, and in 1986 there will be in Australasia, if this progression continues, 94 millions of people.